


Penmanship

by ishafel



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-31
Updated: 2010-03-31
Packaged: 2017-10-08 13:49:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/76272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can learn a great deal from a man's handwriting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Penmanship

Tom Riddle writes lists in the round, sloping hand of a boy raised in an orphanage. Lists of names. Malfoy. Black. Lestrange. Avery. Crabbe. Rosier. Prince. They are the names of the great families of wizarding Britain, the houses that ruled the country when Tom was born. And they have one other thing in common. Each of them has a child, children: sons and daughters who are old enough to be independent, young enough to be malleable.

Tom means to bend them. He means to break them. Their fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers, are the ones who turned away Merope Gaunt, left her, big with child and starving, to the mercy of the Muggles.

They are the scions of their houses, the hope of the future and sometimes the despair. They are the flower of a generation, and he means to arrange them as pleases. He writes their names, carefully, as if the nuns still waited with their rulers. He will make no mistakes, not in this.


End file.
